(Phil Coulter)
Farewell my companions, my friends and my workmates
Farewell to the payday, the pints and the crack
We gave them our best years now they've paid us back
By making us yesterday's men
Sure as hell
By making us yesterday's men
'Twas Joey the weasel that gave us the wire
They were closing the factory down
Though we didn't believe him and called him a liar
The redundancy letters came round
And we read them in silence, I choked back a tear
It was hard to believe after twenty-odd years
We said our goodbyes by the factory gates
One cold Friday evening last year
And I saw it all there in the eyes of my mates
The anger, the sorrow, the fear
Like our fathers before us we worked there with pride
Now I fought back the bitterness burning inside
Now Jimmy, said she, Give the kids a few bob
After all, it is Friday night
How could I tell her that I hadn't a job
And from now things were going to be tight
Well I remember it cut like a knife
I was never a day on the dole in my life
The machines now are idle and the workbenches bare
There's dust on the factory floor
They've boarded the windows and they've chained up the gates
And they've padlocked the factory door
And I'm on the scrap-heap, and I'm thirty-nine
Just one of the hundreds, cut down in my prime
(as sung by Cilla Fisher & Artie Trezise)